Class of 2002

Eighteen emerging international leaders have been awarded the first Yale World Fellowships and will spend the fall 2002 semester in a new global leadership program at Yale University.

“The Yale World Fellows have already played significant roles in shaping their countries and professions,” said Yale President Richard C. Levin. “This new Yale program will give them an educational experience that will help equip them for important positions of leadership in the decades ahead.”

The World Fellows Program is a major component of Yale’s broader initiative to become a global university. Selected from over 500 applications from more than 100 countries, from Albania to Zimbabwe, the Fellows are as diverse in background as they are in nationality.

The first class includes an economic advisor to the president of Ecuador, the president of a micro-enterprise bank in India, a broadcast journalists from Cameroon, a human rights defender from Sierra Leone and the dean of one of China’s leading law schools. World Fellows will spend 13 weeks this fall engaged in study with Yale’s leading faculty: creating an academic program to further the work they are already doing in their own countries.

“Training leaders is an enterprise in which Yale has excelled for more than 300 years,” said Daniel Esty, Director of the World Fellows Program and professor of law and environmental policy at Yale. “Yale’s new World Fellows Program is designed to build a global network of individuals who are positioned to assume leadership roles in their own countries and on the global stage.”

Using a network of nominators, the World Fellows Program scoured the globe for the most promising candidates. According to Esty, World Fellows must meet rigorous selection criteria. “Fellows must have an established record of achievement and engagement in public issues, the promise of future leadership, a capacity for creative, strategic and entrepreneurial thinking and the ability to contribute to global understanding at Yale.”

“The benefits of the new Program will go beyond the Fellows and the countries they are from,” Esty noted. “The Yale community stands to benefit enormously from the perspectives the World Fellows will bring to campus.”

Each Fellow will be assigned a faculty advisor and will participate in a special seminar taught by members of Yale’s faculty. Fellows will also have full access to any courses offered at Yale and independent study opportunities. Along with the academic experience, the World Fellows Program offers participants an extensive set of extracurricular activities, both on and off campus involving visiting speakers, dialogues with students and distinguished alumni. Yale will cover residential and travel expenses for Fellows and their families. To cover living expenses, a stipend will also be provided.

“Having worked for the past year on the launch of the World Fellows Program, I’ve been impressed by the drawing power of the Yale name. The quality of the applicants was even more impressive than the quantity,” said Brooke Shearer, the program’s executive director. “The program will enrich the University as well as the careers of the fellows, and it will dramatize President Levin’s commitment to making this a truly global university.”

To ensure that the network established during their time at Yale remains strong, Fellows will be invited back to World Fellow reunions. Alumni Fellows will have the opportunity to attend workshops and lectures and to continue their dialogue and reflection on critical issues of the day.